


silence is better

by corollary



Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-08
Updated: 2010-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corollary/pseuds/corollary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Wish-fulfillment – it was so easy to pretend." A quiet kitchen and a warm afternoon is all they need, to recover what she had lost. Mild implications of Hope/Serah, Hope/Lightning, and Snow/Serah. Written for the areyougame comm on DW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silence is better

He sulks when Lightning's not home.

It's a typical teenage sulk, with lips downturned and eyes hidden defiantly underneath his shaggy fringe. He needs a haircut, Serah thinks absently, and wonders where she put her scissors. The kitchen is always such a clutter; neither she nor Light can keep a place organised for the life of them.

"Stop moping," she tells him, still clearing the dishes off the table. "Help me get started on dinner."

"You mean, 'do all the cooking so I don't burn a salad again', right?" His eyes flash upward, briefly animated and almost amused.

She laughs. "Pretty much, yeah."

They work in silence, a flurry of cutting blades and shuffling feet and 'oh, sorry' every time the cramped kitchen space gets the better of them – except he isn't sorry, not really, not if the pink tinge of his neck and ears is any indication.

Hope's fifteenth birthday passed with little fanfare a few weeks ago (he hadn't wanted a celebration, he said, but Lightning had still tripped all over herself trying to bake the perfect cake until Serah had made a mercy trip to the bakery) and Serah hadn't been a teenager since becoming a l'Cie – and then, a quiet ceremony on the beach, barefoot in the sand and a single ring she hadn't taken off since – but in the kitchen, his eyes burning into her back with all the clumsiness and misguided hope of adolescence, she doesn't feel that much older.

He's taller than her now, too. Soon, there will be stubble – not a beard, she thinks, but the same awkward patchiness Snow wrestles with on a daily basis.

"I miss it, sometimes," she says, absently peeling a carrot. "Being a kid. Light always tried to take the burden on herself so I could have a childhood, but I tried to grow up too fast so she could have some fun too, you know?"

"Then you became a l'Cie," he continues for her.

"Yeah."

She wonders what will be next for him, even though she shouldn't. A pretty girl, if he can ever get over Lightning; fumbling affection behind a rosebush, learning what another person's body can offer. Maybe it won't even be a girl. Someone gentle and mild, someone who will stand back and watch as he grows until the world can fit him. Maybe they'll even end up like this, companionable silence in a flower- and clutter-filled kitchen, the sunlight setting the curtains aglow and bathing every crack and crevice in gold.

For now, though, for now Serah is content to remain in their own gold-filled silence, a calm prelude to tomorrow's shakiness.

He bumps into her again, an accident – or maybe it wasn't – and she's perfect, right where she is.


End file.
